NJIT Launches AI-Powered Solar Eruption Center with $5M NASA Grant

NJIT's Institute for Space Weather Sciences (ISWS) has been awarded a $5 million NASA grant to open a new research center dedicated to developing the next generation of solar eruption prediction capabilities, powered by artificial intelligence.

The new AI-Powered Solar Eruption Center of Excellence in Research and Education (SEC) will partner with NASA, New York University and IBM to advance AI and machine learning tools for improving the predictability of powerful solar eruptions at their onset, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and enhance our physical understanding of these explosive events.

The grant, funded by NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement's Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) Institutional Research Opportunity (MIRO) program, is part of $45 million in funding recently announced by the agency to expand research at 21 higher-education institutions nationwide. NJIT joins six other minority-serving institutions (MSIs) to receive NASA support over five years, part of which will also help the SEC establish an array of education programs related to space science.

“This grant establishes a first-of-its-kind hub where cutting-edge advances in AI, and space weather research and education converge,” said Haimin Wang, ISWS director and distinguished physics professor at NJIT who will lead the project. “By harnessing AI-enabled tools to investigate the fundamental nature of space weather, we aim to significantly enhance our ability to interpret observational data from the Sun to forecast major solar eruptions accurately and in near real-time, a capability beyond our reach up to this point.”

“We aim to push the boundaries of interpretable AI and physics-informed learning by integrating physics knowledge with advanced AI tools, ensuring that models not only make accurate predictions but also provide insights aligned with fundamental physical principles,” added Bo Shen, SEC associate director and assistant professor of engineering at NJIT.

Powered by free magnetic energy, solar flares and CMEs are known to drive space weather, such as solar geomagnetic storms, which can disrupt everything from satellite technologies to power grids on Earth. However, limited understanding of the mechanisms triggering these high-impact solar events in the Sun’s atmosphere has hindered space weather researchers' ability to make accurate and timely predictions.

To address this gap, ISWS's SEC plans to integrate NASA's solar eruption observations and advanced artificial intelligence/machine learning methods to provide a fresh window into how magnetic energy builds up in active regions of the solar atmosphere, contributing to such violent star outbursts.

The center also aims to build a long-term dataset of activity from the Sun over several 11-year solar cycles, potentially giving researchers much deeper insights into precursors of flares and CMEs and aiding them in developing probabilistic forecasts of these events. 

“A major hurdle in understanding solar eruption mechanisms is the limited data on large events like X-class flares,” Wang explained. “Building a large, homogeneous dataset of solar activity using advanced machine learning methods allows us to study these major events with unprecedented resolution and cadence, ultimately revealing eruption mechanisms and unlocking better space weather predictions.”

Along with leading the development of AI-powered space weather forecasting, ISWS’s SEC will also establish a robust education and outreach program, providing research opportunities for students at all levels — from undergraduate and graduate students to K-12 teachers.

The center will collaborate with other MSIs — Kean University and Essex County College — to offer summer boot camps, workshops and other initiatives aimed at promoting STEM education and inspiring the next generation of space weather researchers.

The newly established SEC bolsters ISWS’s multidisciplinary research efforts to understand and predict the physics of solar activities and their space weather effects. The flagship center of the institute is NJIT’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research. In addition, the university’s Center for Computational Heliophysics, Center for Big Data, Center for AI Research and Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics are collaborating centers within the Institute. ISWS also hosts a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates site.

To learn more, visit https://spaceweather.njit.edu